Ritual Reportage

Thursday, February 09, 2006

No. 4

Alexia is the DJ she chooses Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears.

Ritual No.4 Wear tights and tear them off whilst submerged in a bath of bubbles think of Esther Williams

Gilbert: we ask people to film their films in one shot, no editing. Do you have any thoughts on this on how it affected what you filmed etc

Alexia: Filming in one shot makes you enjoy the action more- you have the possibility to be present in it –to complete the action without stopping and starting for the camera..you are not doing the action for the camera, the sense of live is enhanced somehow.

Gilbert: do you think that editing decisions are being made regardless of physical cuts though, choices already made/taken.

Alexia: I see those choices and decisions as performance choices, directional choices rather than editorial choices. For me there is a difference between these choices and the art of afterwards, the edited montage. I see this type of edit (the montage) as a secret/private part of the process. Something which the reader will find difficult to co- author – there are pieces left out, hidden which the reader will not have opportunity to embrace, things we will never get to use

Gilbert: I see editing as all always taking place, between the viewer/reader/writer. I have recently been reading an interesting article by Bruce Andrews. He brings up interesting questions about the online reading environment in relation to Editing, raw material and active roles. If editing is a dimension of reading; if reading constructs.... Can the electronic process of writing offer us an active enough editing, involving us — but with some critical distance — in the aberrant, nonnarrative wanderings of textual sense?

Live Reportage

Every second Thursday of the month we will be sending a three minute film to this blogg. People we meet will be given a list of rituals from which they choose one to perform.
We hope to create a sense of fictional continuity.

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their 'ungrammaticalness'
and as a form of response.

GilbertandGrape

How we use the word ritual

We see ritual as
being a set of prescribed rules:
A specific place, which can be imaginary
Action that can be arbitrary
Context that can be immersed in a certain stillness/mood.

The ruling is public,
clear and social, the meaning may be or it may be indeterminate, private and
individual. Everyday actions like brushing teeth, wearing shoes, cooking a meal
can become the action in a ritual. By naming these actions in our rituals we
hope to bring attention to a connection that can be made regardless of place
and position or religion, but a position or notion that belong whilst moving
as an undefined.

Any type of
behaviour may be said to turn into a ritual when it is stylized or formalized,
and made repetitive in that form
(S.F Nadel 1953)

What interests
us about rituals is the opportunity for implicit multiple meanings, their ungrammatical
ness and as a form of response. We have talked about our collaboration being
something, which is a complex web of political viewpoints, and working through
performance rituals has allowed for an ambiguity of meaning and message
If we assume there must be a system to ritual or rules to organize its operation,
we might expect to recognize ungrammatical usage of the code, however
the ungrammatical is tolerated. Chaos, fragmentation, multiples, set amongst
clear set of prescribed rules describes our rituals. Prescribed rules and stylizations
are central to our work and the repetition of these even more so.